Institutional Burials (Amendment) Bill 2022: Second Stage Seanad Éireann — 2026-02-25 ============================================================ Alice-Mary Higgins (IND), National University of Ireland To begin, I will explain a couple of things we were trying to do with this Bill. When the Institutional Burials Act 2022 was being passed, there were concerns that the language was framed so narrowly that, in effect, it would really only relate to Tuam. Other institutions were allowed to be included, but the terms, descriptions and definitions were almost designed to exclude certain well-known cases of great institutional abuse. The debates at the time related to some of the phrases our Bill seeks to address. Some of the problems, regardless of what the Government chooses to do with to our Bill, will remain unaddressed in the principal Act. There were concerns about how "principal burial land" was framed. It was a very narrow definition . We will come to Bessborough in a minute, but to have a tiny nominal graveyard when there are 900 or more dead children and to say that is the principal burial ground is a concern. We looked very simply to facilitate making an order where "there is reasonable evidence" pointing to a likelihood that inappropriate burials took place on a site. In the incredibly unusual situation of Tuam, the horrendously inappropriate location had already been fully identified. This Bill would allow action where the precise burial ground was not known but where it was known to be in a specific and likely area. Crucially, it widens what we mean by "manifestly inappropriate". The terms were very narrowly constrained in the principal Act. There are other grounds that should be considered in terms of "manifestly inappropriate", including where records indicate extraordinarily high death rates at institutions and a lack of proper death or burial records, or other indications of extremely inappropriate action. I could list all the categories in the Bill but the key point is the Bill is being killed in a novel way today. It is being done by means of a reasoned amendment. Effectively, the Government will avoid voting against the Bill but will vote for an amendment to say, "Let's be against the Bill". A number of options were open to the Government. It could have said it had concerns about aspects of the Bill and wanted us to fix them. If the Government really thought the Bill needed time, it could have come in with one of the infamous timed amendments on it. It could have recognised the concerns, recognised the many people whose loved ones are buried in highly inappropriate situations and who died in circumstances that were inappropriate but who do not fit the narrow definitions of "manifestly inappropriate" in the principal Act, and said maybe we need to look at doing something about that. The Government could have told us how it was planning to address the issues arising from it. We waited for four years. We introduced the Bill in 2022 but we waited to see how it would pan out. Maybe, as we were told, other investigations would take place and it would not just be Tuam. It has just been Tuam. A number of other issues have arisen, which we may come to. There is the narrow scope in terms of DNA. Only a fragment of those who may have loved ones in Tuam are even allowed to volunteer their DNA and check it. That is another consequence. The State should be willing to learn and improve as it goes on and to come up with something different. I will give a minute to a couple of the reasoned arguments the Government has given for declining to give the Bill a Second Reading. It is concerned about the inclusion of "reasonably likely to have taken place", even though in relation to Bessborough we have "very likely". Would "very likely" be acceptable? Burials are "very likely" to have taken place in Bessborough. That is what the commission on mother and baby homes found. The Government also suggests there would be speculative interventions as opposed to evidential interventions. We explicitly refer to "reasonable evidence". Is the Government saying we have to have fully proved the case and every single site has to have a Catherine Corless who does all the work and uncovers all the facts, and that we have to drag the State forward in every instance? Crucially, the Government states regarding concern about manifestly inappropriate burials that it should be noted there was no legal obligation on private burial grounds to keep a register of burials. That is fine, then. We tried to address this problem when the Act was going through the House. The amendment also states: "high mortality rates could sadly sometimes be a feature of historical congregated settings". It was not okay at the time because there were problems. We can quote the Acts, such as the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1874, which states any person who performs a funeral or religious service or burial of any dead body in relation to which no certificate is delivered should give notice to the registrar. There were already significant requirements at the time. It was not much of a free-for-all. Let us remind ourselves of the figures from Bessborough. A total of 923 children had died at one point and in 1943, three out of every four babies died. That is 75% of babies dying. Of the 923, 107 were not properly reported to the authorities and the commission was only able to identify the locations of 64 burial sites for these children. Tell me this is not inappropriate. Tell those who have spoken about the litany of exclusions. To be clear, the State has excluded those receiving an apology today from the residential redress Act. It has excluded those who would not relinquish control over their own stories with a gagging order under section 28. There are exclusions in terms of who received redress under the mother and baby homes scheme. There are exclusions around whose suffering is recognised. Now we have further exclusions regarding which deaths and burials might be recognised as being manifestly inappropriate and an unwillingness from the Government to even engage in this discussion. Perhaps this is because those who were buried, unlike those who were abused in other ways, will not be able to continue a campaign in the same way for further apologies again and again without action. This is part of a litany of exclusion and it is another sign of a State unwilling to engage, learn and constructively and genuinely build a future in which we can be proud of our State. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-02-25/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:41+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-02-25